The Renewal of Mature Industries: An Examination of the Revival of the Dutch Beer Brewing Industry

Many mature industries have recently experienced a remarkable revival. Yet, other important industries appear to remain impervious to change. While the evolution of industries is an important topic in the industrial organization and organizational sociology literature, theorists struggle to explain the determinants of industry renewal. In particular, there is a dearth in theories that explain (1) the formation of new organizational identities in mature industries, (2) the successful founding of new organizations and (3) the mobilization of entrepreneurs. In this dissertation, I build on the organizational sociology literature to forward an endogenous view on industry renewal arguing that the vulnerability of an industry toward renewal is determined by internal structural properties of the industry. Findings from three empirical studies of the recent revival of the Dutch beer brewing industry suggest that renewal is more likely in industries that (1) provide actors with a diverse reservoir of authentic identity elements for the formation of new organizational identities, (2) contain a significant number of ancestral organizations that left behind recyclable organizational elements, and (3) harbor a substantial number of actors that adhere to alternative ways of thinking compared to the industry’s “modus operandi”. Jointly, these findings demonstrate the potency of research under the eclectic umbrella of organizational sociology to provide explanations for the structural vulnerability of industries toward renewal. In particular, this dissertation calls for more research on the role of organizational destruction in industry evolution. Indeed, destruction appears to be an important generative process and an improved understanding of the role of destruction in industry renewal may be crucial for inspiring renewal in industries dominated by organizations that are too big too fail

What Is Dead May Never Die: Institutional Regeneration through Logic Reemergence in Dutch Beer Brewing

Through an in-depth, historically embedded study of the craft revolution in Dutch beer brewing that began in the 1970s, we illuminate how organizational fields may experience regenerative change through the reemergence of traditional arrangements. The remarkable resurgence of craft in this context, following the rapid industrialization of the twentieth century that left only industrially produced pilsner in its wake, serves as the basis of our process theory of regenerative institutional change through logic reemergence. The results of our qualitative analysis show that institutional logics that appear dead or decomposed may never truly die, as they leave remnants behind that field actors can rediscover, repurpose, and reuse at later stages. We show how, in the Netherlands, networks of individuals that had access to the remnants of craft brewing were regenerated, in part fueled by increasing exposure to British, Belgian, and German craft brewing, and how these networks ultimately succeeded in reviving traditional prescriptions for beer and brewing, as well as restoring previously abandoned brewery forms and technologies and beer styles. These activities led not only to a sudden proliferation of alternatives to the dominant industrial pilsner but also to fundamental changes in the meaning and organization of beer brewing, as they were associated with the reinvigoration of institutional orders that preceded those of the corporation and the market. Yet we also observe how, on the ground, remnants of traditional craft often needed to be blended with contemporaneous elements from modern industrialism, as well as foreign representations of craft, to facilitate reemergence. We thus argue that regenerative institutional change likely resembles a dualistic process of restoration and transformation